Price and income elasticities estimated from a country's export demand function are used both to predict and to prescribe effective export strategies. But the focus on elasticities has led to the neglect of an important empirical regularity: a strong persistencein the growth rate of a country's...

The authorexamines a range of cross-sectional variation in performance and policies for evidence on what distinguishes successes from failures. At about 6 percent, the growth rate of the Four Tigers - Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan (China) - are among the largest...

The author, using a neoclassical Solow model, estimates an economy's rate of convergence to its own steady state. Using panel date for a sample of 98 countries, the author applies Chamberlain's (1984) estimation procedures to account for the presence of country-specific effects resulting from...

The widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policies. But the basis for this"stylized fact"is questionable, the authors argue. Widely cited evidence of a strong negative correlation between size and consumption per person is...

The author presents a simple endogenous growth model (with two types of capital) that shows the sizable long-run effects on growth of distortionary policies. The model applies to many different types of distortions of relative prices common in developing countries - for example, price controls,...

Charging for social marginal costs is efficient regardless of price elasticities, but the importance of getting prices"right"is greater the more manageable, or elastic, the demand. In efficient pollution control programs, options to make cars cleaner are combined optimally with demand...

How well do rural households in developing countries mitigate the income risk of the rural sector? There are several sensible reasons why households cannot fully insure consumption against income fluctuations. The well-known problems of moral hazard, information asymmetries, and deficient...

The authors present new estimates of long-term total factor productivity (TFP) growth for 83 industrial and developing countries for 1960-87. These estimates are based on new data developed for the research project on total factor productivity growth (and available on diskette). Although based...

Why does income inequality differ among countries? Using a sample of 80 countries from the 1980s, the author shows that two types of factors explain variations in income inequality. The first are factors that are, in the short term, independent of economic policies and are included in the...

Aid is good for the poor. This paper uses detailed aid data spanning 60 developing countries over the past two decades to show that social aid significantly and directly benefits the poorest in society, while economic aid increases the income of the poor through growth. This new and unequivocal...